Friday 22 July 2016

Festival of the Sound 2016 # 3: Giving the Musicians Their Choice

If Tuesday of the first week was mainly devoted to audience favourites, James Campbell thought that Wednesday should be a day chosen by the artists.  Under the open-ended heading of "our favourite sonatas," the Festival put together two daytime concerts of works entirely chosen by the musicians.

As part of the proceedings, the "resident musicologist", Jeffrey Stokes, gave one of his amusing and informative lectures on the history and development of the sonata, covering effectively in 30 minutes a subject that most academics couldn't get through in anything under a week!

Note (Rant for the day): do not confuse this concept with the history and development of the "sonata form movement," although Stokes did briefly cover that topic as well.  In any case, that is a far more complex subject and to some degree a complete red herring, since the supposed inventor or perfecter of the form -- Haydn -- hardly ever composed a movement that strictly conforms to the models shown in most music texts.  (Rant over).

It should come as no surprise that the selection of works on this day leaned more towards the challenging or stimulating rather than the simply beautiful.  And none the worse for that!

The third and last of Brahms' violin sonatas, Sonata in D Minor, Op. 108, was performed by Moshe Hammer (violin) and Leopoldo Erice (piano).  In the first movement they struck the balance point between lyricism and drama, a balance which is inherent in the melodic figures making up the main theme.  The development section had a slightly uneasy quality from the frequent key shifts, especially in the long passage over the low A bass pedal point.   The coda with its final ascent to a quiet arpeggio chord was taken very slowly, increasing the effect.  Hammer played with great beauty of tone on the low strings in the slow movement.  The scherzo began by sounding very perky but soon developed much more dramatic weight.  True drama arrived in the energetic finale, and both artists here played with power and momentum.  Altogether, a gripping performance.

As a complete contrast we then heard the Sonata giocosa for guitar by Joaquin Rodrigo, played by Daniel Bolshoy.  As he pointed out in advance, the joke was mainly on the guitarist as the primarily tonal harmonies in the three movements are generously sprinkled with pungent "wrong" notes.  At any rate, a good dose of classical guitar playing is a highly desirable addition to the Festival's programmes, and this piece was both challenging and enjoyable.

Speaking of challenges, Peter Longworth threw us a tough one with Prokofiev's Piano Sonata No. 7, Op. 83.  Although it came out fairly late in his career, it harks back to the more mechanistic music he composed as a young man.  In no uncertain terms, this music proves Prokofiev's frequent contention that the piano is in fact a percussion instrument.  It's tempting to try to assign some kind of specific programmatic intention to the music.  Apart from the quotation from Schumann's song Wehmut ("Sadness") in the slow movement, nothing else can be said with certainty.  It has been long known as one of the three "War Sonatas" on account of the time of composition (1942), but may in fact have much more to say about the Stalinist regime than about the external events of that year.

Longworth played throughout the first and third movements with considerable fire, and with machine-like precision -- an absolute requirement of the music.  The slower, more sentimental slow movement then came across as an unreal mocking fantasy by contrast.  The concluding pages with the hammered ostinato octaves drew rousing applause from the audience, and rightly so.

The second programme partnered Longworth with cellist Rolf Gjelsten in Beethoven's Cello Sonata in C Major, Op. 102 No. 1.  This work, although not as late as some more well-known examples, certainly displays the late Beethoven's tendency towards structural experimentation.  It has just two movements, each consisting of a slow introduction followed by a faster main section.  However, neither of the two introductions is precisely conventional (one repeats the same theme several times, while the other includes a restatement of the first movement's main theme).  Furthermore, the movements overall are compact in scale, yet the introductions appear suited to much longer movements.

This is a sound world like the famous late quartets in demanding of the artists not only technical proficiency but also deeply-thought interpretation of the music on its own terms.  The performers here encompassed the music's own distinctive character, the wistfulness and the energy being equally represented.

The concert concluded with the String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36 by Brahms.  Some might question where this fitted into a programme devoted to "Our Favourite Sonatas", but as Jeffrey Stokes had rightly pointed out, a sextet such as this might originally have been called a sonata for 6 strings or a "sonata a 6".  Besides, as he found out on asking the players, it's beautiful, it's intriguing, it's fun, and it's Brahms.  What more reasons could you want?

Rolf Gjelsten and violist Gillian Ansell joined the Penderecki Quartet in a reading which captured all the diverse moods -- and there are many of them.  While I enjoyed the first movement, I particularly look forward in this work to the charming opening theme of the scherzo.  It's certainly not like any "scherzo" you might think of from Beethoven.  Rather, you get an indolent, gentle lyrical theme decorated in each bar with an appoggiatura rather in the  manner of Schumann's Arabeske for piano, lending a pleasing kind of curve to the theme.  It's played by a trio of two violins and viola in chordal harmony, supported by gentle pizzicati from the two cellos, and when well played (as it was here) the effect is bewitchingly beautiful.  Yes, the scherzo does later move into a more vigorous, playful mode in the two trios, but this haunting opening theme returns as well to beguile us -- and beguiling is a good word to describe the playing we heard from this group.

Following the scherzo, the slow movement brought the most beautiful sustained playing.  The energetic finale then contrasted with its main theme notable for elastic phrase lengths -- the different component parts of the theme mysteriously get shorter or longer on each replaying.  There's also the never-failing joke of the descending scale landing on the note below the one we expect because -- well, because why not?  All this was brought together by the players, with suitable emphasis on the joke notes, until the elements were all gathered together and the tremolando notes used to build up a rousing conclusion.  I think Brahms would have approved.

You can get the most fascinating programmes when you ask the musicians to pick their own favourites to perform!

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